Joint Hurriyat calls for shutdown on Aug 15

Srinagar, Aug 13: United Hurriyat leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik has called people to observe complete shutdown on August 15 and appealed teachers, students and their parents to boycott all functions related to India’s Independence Day. In a statement on Sunday, the leadership also warned the government not to force teachers, students and their parents to participate in these functions.Joint leadership appealed parents that they should stop their children from participating in the August 15, related functions.“We are not against the freedom of any country and will provide them a chance to decide the future by allowing independent plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, till then it doesn’t have any moral and constitutional right to organize the freedom celebrations on the soil of this state,” joint leadership said in a statement issued here.“India itself attained freedom from British rule on 15 August 1947 and became an independent country but only after 72 days of this freedom, this country snatched the freedom rights of the Kashmiri people and forcibly occupied this region by landing its troops on 27 October and since then this occupation continues,” the United Hurriyat said. “Kashmir is an internationally acknowledged dispute and Delhi can neither succeed in changing the status and nature of this state by its rigid and stubborn policy nor can be this region kept permanently under the forced control, they said and added that any tinkering or fiddling in article 35A won’t (state Subject law) be tolerated,” the leadership said.Paying glorious tributes to slain militants in Shopian gunfight, the leadership said that “they are laying their precious lives for sacred cause”.